How to Use FAQ's To Get Found In AI Search

Introduction

Hi, welcome back to the Website Success Show. It is Jules here, and if you've been wondering how to get AI tools like ChatGPT to recommend your business, there's one particular thing that is often underused. This isn't a new hack for AI search visibility, and there aren't any hacks for AI search visibility. You can go back and listen to episode 143, which is all about AI search and why simple foundations still matter. So if anybody is telling you they've got a hack for AI visibility, it's probably not true, to be honest with you.

So I was working on a website visibility report last week, which is the SEO audit that I do for one-to-one clients where I dive into your website and let you know exactly what's holding it back, what the priority fixes are, and what can wait, because you can't do everything all at once. Knowing what to focus on first, what's really going to make a difference right now is really helpful, I think.

So I was working on an SEO report for a physiotherapy business, and I noticed that they were showing up in particular for sports massage. And when I dived into it and saw which pages were actually showing up for the sports massage, one of the pages that was really showing up was their FAQs page. That was showing up specifically for sports massage, with both AI traffic and regular organic search. So I wanted to talk today about how to use frequently asked questions to increase both traffic to your website and conversions.

Why FAQs Matter

The reason this matters is because it can help solve two real problems that often happen with websites. Frequently asked questions get rid of hesitation, so human visitors who come through to your website are helped to actually make that decision to buy from you. And for search engines, they provide context and the language that helps search engines understand that you're an expert in this particular thing, or that you offer this particular service.

Someone may have been through your whole services page, read all of it, and be right at the point of clicking book, but there's a little doubt in the back of their mind. If you can answer those questions right there beside or before that call to action button, you can help eliminate that. Because once people have gone off your website, you might think they'll send an enquiry or come back, but if you can remove that drop-off, more people convert and you make more sales.

It also helps get the right-fit people coming through. If you talk about the way you work and things like your refund policy upfront, that eliminates people who aren't the right fit for you. And it helps with your admin, because if you're spending time answering the same question over and over with prospective clients, you can eliminate that time and get on with serving your clients or generating more leads.

In terms of showing up on Google, people are now searching for much longer terms. They have conversations with Google, with their smart speaker, with AI bots. Those frequently asked questions, worded right, can massively help your business be the one that shows up, and they show that you know your topic. Frequently asked questions can also get cited in AI overviews and snippets, because if it's a clean, structured answer, not a great long wall of text, they can easily extract chunks of information to deliver directly in the results.

Finding the Right Questions

To begin with, start with real questions. What are the things you always get asked, the questions clients genuinely ask you repeatedly, or the ones you've only been asked once but know should be there? Things like onboarding queries or questions that come up in consultations. Even if it feels really basic, if people are asking it over and over, don't be afraid to put it on your website, because if one person has asked it, chances are other people are thinking it as well. Keep it in plain language that people actually use. This is all part of making people not burn mental calories to work out how to spend money with you.

You can also think about the questions people are searching for beyond the ones you're asked directly. Not just the ones you wish people asked, though you can add some of those lower down the list. You can look in your Google Search Console, a free tool that helps you understand what queries your website is showing up for. It's one of the most important free tools to have set up if you want traffic from Google. I've got a mini course on my website all about setting up both Google Analytics and Google Search Console. You can filter by question modifiers like how, what, can and is, one at a time, and see the question-type queries you're showing up for.

Go to a Google search results page and type in a term related to what you do. Look at the AI overviews, the "People also ask" section, and the related searches at the bottom. There are also a couple of great websites for this: AlsoAsked.com and AnswerThePublic.com, which start with a topic and branch out into questions you may not have thought of. You can use AI like Google Gemini to surface more, but try not to start with AI. Start off with the things already coming through from your real-life clients, and go from there.

Structuring FAQs on Your Website

There are specific ways to structure these that help with showing up in search and being cited in AI overviews. Make sure each question and answer can be taken out of the context of the page and still make sense. Don't say things like "as mentioned above" or assume people have read the rest of the page. You can use headings to help: an H2 like "FAQs about treatments at [your business]", with the questions themselves as H3 headings, and the answer as a couple of sentences of paragraph text. You can use links within your answers to deeper related pages, rather than great walls of text.

When you answer, lead with the answer, not a paragraph of waffle before you actually answer the question itself. We want a short, concise answer that can link out if it needs to. A little more technical, but ideally implement FAQ schema on your page. It's a piece of structured data that helps the bots understand your website, and it's something I can help with. Make sure you have one question per entry rather than three rolled into one. Keep them short and complete, roughly 40 to 60 words, long enough to answer but short enough to stay skimmable.

Dive deeper if you need to. On a sales page for my SEO report service, I might have "why has my organic traffic suddenly dropped". Answering that properly could be a thousand-plus words, which would overwhelm a sales page, so there I'd give a tight two or three sentence answer, then say "for a step-by-step checklist, read our full guide" and link to a blog post. On the blog itself I can then link back to the service page. Then refresh them over time, especially if something makes an answer more relevant, because AI and Google like fresh information.

Where to Put FAQs on Your Website

I'm a firm believer in scattering these throughout your site. On your homepage, you don't want loads, but a few general questions someone might have when first exploring your business, fairly low down, maybe just above the footer or before your final call to action. Use an accordion so it isn't walls of text.

On services and product pages, adding four to six targeted FAQs at the bottom helps overcome thin content, weaves in keywords and key phrases, and helps people convert, without cluttering the main message. Having an actual FAQ page is helpful too. Yourwebsite.com/faq is a page we often see cited in AI overviews and chats. You could include business questions like terms, refunds and booking policies, practical ones like location and parking, and questions about your individual services. Give it one H1, then H2s to break it into types, so it's skimmable for people and bots, and add a search box if your builder has one.

Local Business FAQs

If you're a local business, think about FAQs with local intent. For a physio, if there's a big local event like a marathon, have a question about it, especially an annual one, adding the location in. For example, "should I book a sports massage before or after the Milton Keynes Marathon" shows you're in the area and mentions that you do sports massage in Milton Keynes. You could also have "where can I park for my appointment at [business name]", adding the street or landmarks, or "are you near [local landmark]". It's a way to weave local keywords in without repeating yourself.

Google Business Profiles and AI

Now let's talk about Google Business Profiles, because they're important for local businesses. We used to have a Q&A section where you could ask and answer questions yourself, and anyone else could too. Google has now retired that, and it's handled with AI. Google's features are "Ask about this place" or "Ask Maps", which use Gemini to generate an answer when someone asks. You may have seen similar on shopping sites.

Where that comes from is your website content, if your website is linked to your profile, plus your reviews and profile details, rather than anything you've typed in manually. You can't control the questions any more, but you can control the sources Google draws from: your website, your social media if you use it, and the information on your profile. Making sure the services, products and categories you tell Google about are accurate and complete is how you make sure people's questions get answered the right way.

FAQs for Sales Friction

For the FAQs that help with sales friction, bring in the hesitations and common questions people have about buying from you. You could also answer pricing, timelines, how far booked up you are, deliverables, and things people need to know before appointments. All of that helps with customer service and frees up your time, and a receptionist's time if that's a consideration. It also improves the time people spend on your pages and the engagement, which sends strong signals that this is a quality website. All of this is to say that FAQs are a really underused way to grow your traffic, grow your authority, and increase conversions, and they matter more than ever now, because AI overviews and AI answers do seem to feed directly from frequently asked questions.

Your Takeaway and Free Guide

Your one takeaway this week is to look at your core pages: your homepage, your most important product or service, your About page, and your contact page with those location and parking questions. Look at the FAQs you already have, based on being able to take them out of context and still make sense, and think about what to change or add that could help with both traffic and conversions. I've got a free guide called Discover Your Core Topics that can help you think of FAQs around the core topics your business needs to be known for, and nail those down to three to five things. We need to be the experts in what we do, and going deep on a handful of things shows that better than covering everything broadly. Grab the guide and let me know what you discover. If you'd like my help using FAQs to show up in search and convert people, book a free Website Potential discovery call. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you soon.